90% of drone strikes miss & other drone details leaked

[Thanas]

Wired

It’s been just over two years since Edward Snowden leaked a massive trove of NSA documents, and more than five since Chelsea Manning gave WikiLeaks a megacache of military and diplomatic secrets. Now there appears to be a new source on that scale of classified leaks—this time with a focus on drones.

On Thursday the Intercept published a groundbreaking new collection of documents related to America’s use of unmanned aerial vehicles to kill foreign targets in countries ranging from Afghanistan to Yemen. The revelations about the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command actions include primary source evidence that as many as 90 percent of US drone killings in one five month period weren’t the intended target, that a former British citizen was killed in a drone strike despite repeated opportunities to capture him instead, and details of the grisly process by which the American government chooses who will die, down to the “baseball cards” of profile information created for individual targets, and the chain of authorization that goes up directly to the president.

All of this new information, according to the Intercept, appears to have come from a single anonymous whistleblower. A spokesperson for the investigative news site declined to comment on that source. But unlike the leaks of Snowden or Manning, the spilled classified materials are accompanied by statements about the whistleblower’s motivation in his or her own words.

“This outrageous explosion of watchlisting—of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them ‘baseball cards,’ assigning them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield—it was, from the very first instance, wrong,” the source tells the Intercept. “We’re allowing this to happen. And by ‘we,’ I mean every American citizen who has access to this information now, but continues to do nothing about it.”

Reports first surfaced in the fall of last year that the Intercept, a news site created in part to analyze and publish the remaining cache of Snowden NSA documents, had found a second source of highly classified information. The final scene of the film “Citizenfour,” directed by Intercept co-founder Laura Poitras, shows fellow Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald meeting with Snowden in Moscow to tell him about a new source with information about the U.S. drone program, whom he says has been communicating with the Intercept‘s Jeremy Scahill. At one point, Greenwald draws Snowden a diagram of the authorization chain for drone strikes that ends with the president, one that looks very similar to the one included in Thursday’s publication.

“It’s really risky,” Snowden tells Greenwald in the scene. “That person is incredibly bold.”

“The boldness of it is shocking,” Greenwald responds, “But it was obviously motivated by what you did.”

In the scene, Greenwald also tells Snowden the security tools the Intercept is using to communicate with the source, writing the names of the software on a piece of paper in what may have been an attempt to avoid eavesdroppers. Those security tools, along with the Intercept‘s reputation for combative, unapologetic investigation of the U.S. government, may help explain how the site seems to have found another Snowden-like source of national security secrets. The Intercept and its parent company First Look Media employ world-class security staff like former Googler Morgan Marquis-Boire, Tor developer Erinn Clark, and former EFF technologist Micah Lee. Far more than most news sites, its reporters use tools like the encryption software PGP and the anonymous upload system SecureDrop to protect the identities of its sources.

Whether those measures can actually protect this particular source—or whether the source Greenwald told Snowden about is even the same one who leaked the Intercept‘s Drone Papers—remains to be seen. Yahoo News reported last year that the FBI had identified a “second leaker” to the Intercept and searched his or her home as part of a criminal investigation.

If that reported search of the leaker’s home did happen, however, it doesn’t seem to have slowed down the Intercept or its whistleblower. A year later, no arrests or charges have been made public, and the site has now published what appear to be the biggest revelations yet from its new source.

In the Citizenfour scene, Snowden tells Greenwald he hopes that the new leaks could help change the perception of whistleblowers in general. “This could raise the political situation with whistleblowing to a whole new level, he says.

“Exactly,” Greenwald responds. “People are going to see what’s being hidden by a totally different part of the government.”

Drone papers here. Holy shit, are they chilling. Straight out of 1984.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah. It's not surprising that lobbing tank-killer missiles into the vehicles and buildings a person is believed to occupy kills about ten people per one time you actually blow up the person you're targeting.

To be selective you would need a very different kind of weapon- say, a hovering helicopter drone with a sniper rifle, that got close enough it could actually specifically identify an individual's face beyond the possibility of doubt.

[Highlord Laan]

Yeah. It's not surprising that lobbing tank-killer missiles into the vehicles and buildings a person is believed to occupy kills about ten people per one time you actually blow up the person you're targeting.

To be selective you would need a very different kind of weapon- say, a hovering helicopter drone with a sniper rifle, that got close enough it could actually specifically identify an individual's face beyond the possibility of doubt.

There's an already much better system for making damned sure the target marked for death is both the one you're looking for and that killing them won't get others killed as collateral. It's called a fucking sniper. All this reliance on drones and shit is an attempt to take the human factor (and cost) out of warfare, which is something that should be avoided.

[Patroklos]

Yeah, lets just drop in a sniper. Easy peasy!

Whatever the drawbacks of drones are pretending you can just drop a sniper in to target these same people/locations is still stupid. The proper action sometimes against a target you either have little information on or a sub optimal tool to hit is to just pass. Pull the SOF cock out of your mouth.

[Adam Reynolds]

Yeah. It's not surprising that lobbing tank-killer missiles into the vehicles and buildings a person is believed to occupy kills about ten people per one time you actually blow up the person you're targeting.

To be selective you would need a very different kind of weapon- say, a hovering helicopter drone with a sniper rifle, that got close enough it could actually specifically identify an individual's face beyond the possibility of doubt.

There's an already much better system for making damned sure the target marked for death is both the one you're looking for and that killing them won't get others killed as collateral. It's called a fucking sniper. All this reliance on drones and shit is an attempt to take the human factor (and cost) out of warfare, which is something that should be avoided.

So instead of realizing that this is a fairly good indication that the American War on Terror is a fool's crusade, you take the position that a better strategy is sending in individual soldiers to take care of it personally. That always works better. Stop wanking to Call of Duty and Tom Clancy novels.

What drone strikes really are is a continuation of the same strategic bombing policies from World War two. We can't use mass carpet bombing anymore, so now we use "surgical" strikes in an attempt to accomplish the same thing. If the Japanese didn't surrender after the majority of their cities were decimated by firebombing*, why do we thing that the same idea will work here?

* It is debatable, but even the atomic bombs did not conclusively lead to the Japanese surrender. Imperial Japan surrendered because of the fact that the Soviets directly entered the war on the side of America, ending any chance of a negotiated settlement with favorable terms.

[K. A. Pital]

"Drawbacks" to drone operations are called dead innocent foreigners, if we avoid using today's brand of newspeak. But why am I not surprised...

[Simon_Jester]

Uh, yeah. Because people were more honest and caring about civilian casualties in the distant past. Right?

Yeah. It's not surprising that lobbing tank-killer missiles into the vehicles and buildings a person is believed to occupy kills about ten people per one time you actually blow up the person you're targeting.

To be selective you would need a very different kind of weapon- say, a hovering helicopter drone with a sniper rifle, that got close enough it could actually specifically identify an individual's face beyond the possibility of doubt.

There's an already much better system for making damned sure the target marked for death is both the one you're looking for and that killing them won't get others killed as collateral. It's called a fucking sniper. All this reliance on drones and shit is an attempt to take the human factor (and cost) out of warfare, which is something that should be avoided.

In cases where the US uses the drones at all, this would be spectacularly unwise and probably amount to suicide for whatever sniper(s) and their escorts we sent in. The US isn't doing this gratuitous vicious drone-bombing campaign in places its soldiers can readily march to.

[This is not a comment for or against drones. But if one is going to have opinions on military affairs, one should at least have knowledge of what the military can and cannot do, and what the risks are. Like how nobody has a right to argue about what a car designer should do if they don't know a car has an engine and a transmission]

What drone strikes really are is a continuation of the same strategic bombing policies from World War two. We can't use mass carpet bombing anymore, so now we use "surgical" strikes in an attempt to accomplish the same thing. If the Japanese didn't surrender after the majority of their cities were decimated by firebombing*, why do we thing that the same idea will work here?

Looking at the history of how the doctrine actually evolved- the idea of 'precise' bombing really did replace the idea of mass area (conventional or nuclear) bombing. Not just as a "well, we can't do this anymore" thing, but as a "this is a more efficient way of accomplishing the goal" thing.

The idea being that overwhelming air power could destroy the vital parts of an enemy's ability to resist, neutralizing them without the need for a massive, costly, time-consuming (and slaughter-heavy) bombardment.

What's truly unfortunate is that the air power theorists then got a war that triggered all their confirmation biases- the Gulf War. Because when you're fighting a large army in an open desert that's commanded by a suspicious, power-hungry dictator whose people never really liked him anyway, hell yes this strategy is effective. Blowing up a few key command bunkers, air defense installations, and so on can totally break apart the chain of command and dislocate the dictator's military power, at which point you can pretty much demolish the enemy's entire army at will and there's nowhere for them to run or hide because they're fighting in the middle of the desert.

This is almost the ideal scenario for 'surgical strike' airpower.

But somehow, two generations of American policymakers looked at this war and decided it 'must' mean that they could do the same thing to any opponent. And what works against a highly centralized, concentrated, unmotivated, heavily equipped army in the desert does not work against a decentralized, scattered, ideologically fanatical, lightly equipped guerilla force spread across half the Middle East. Which makes attempts to destroy Al Qaeda by strategic bombing utterly, utterly pointless, and any civilian deaths that result from that attempt into a stupid, bloody, barbarous waste.

* It is debatable, but even the atomic bombs did not conclusively lead to the Japanese surrender. Imperial Japan surrendered because of the fact that the Soviets directly entered the war on the side of America, ending any chance of a negotiated settlement with favorable terms.

If it's debateable, and there were two separate causes that both made negotiated settlement impossible simultaneously, saying "it wasn't X, it was Y" seems biased. Personally I'd attribute the Japanese surrender to both factors at the same time.

[Channel72]

Which makes attempts to destroy Al Qaeda by strategic bombing utterly, utterly pointless, and any civilian deaths that result from that attempt into a stupid, bloody, barbarous waste.

Well, I think the moral problem here is compounded by the fact that the first part of your sentence isn't necessarily true. Let's put aside the serious moral problems here for a second, and ask the cold and ruthless question: "does the drone program effectively accomplish its goal?" - where the goal is to kill people the US doesn't like cheaply and effectively with minimal political fuss. The answer to that question seems to be yes. Of course, it's certainly debatable, as most of the claims about the drone program's effectiveness come from biased sources (namely, from Washington). But using third party metrics, such as estimated finances available to Al Qaeda and overall operational resources, it appears that Al Qaeda's overall operational capacity - as an international terrorist organization - has declined dramatically since the days of their "big hits" like 9/11 and the Madrid/London bombings. The Al Qaeda name is still around - but it's really Al Qaeda in name only. The actual participants who use the name are not international terrorists, but just local soldiers who fight openly in various sectarian conflicts throughout Syria and Iraq.

The drone program also directly frustrates Al Qaeda's openly stated goal of "bleeding" the US to death by continuously forcing it to get involved in expensive overseas wars. Recall this was Bin Laden's doctrine which he formulated via his experience fighting the USSR, and this "bleed the superpower" strategy formed a core tenet of the Al Qaeda operating strategy in the 90s and early 2000s. That strategy actually seemed to be working for a while, especially when Bush and Cheney inexplicably decided to go on a needless trillion-dollar rampage throughout Iraq. But that strategy is totally defunct now, since the US can just sit at home, eating nachos and pressing a button that kills somebody on the outskirts of Islamabad.

So it appears the drone program works. The problem is that it also causes ridiculous levels of collateral damage and murdered innocents, and takes the normal human tendency to dehumanize enemies to new, video-game like levels of absurdity. The people who've lost children or family members in drone strikes will forever hate the United States - and this will likely not end well in the long run.

[Starglider]

What drone strikes really are is a continuation of the same strategic bombing policies from World War two.

You have absolutely zero clue what you are talking about and I strongly suggest you cease spouting random crap demonstrating your total lack of understanding of any military concept.

We can't use mass carpet bombing anymore, so now we use "surgical" strikes in an attempt to accomplish the same thing.

Except that it is in no way intended to accomplish anything remotely resembling ´the same thing´, by any military or even civillian commander, ever.

Drone strikes are a tactic used to assassinate enemy leadership elements. Civilian casualties are undesireable because they´re bad for diplomatic relations, good for enemy recruitment, bad for friendly recruiment and bad for friendly political support. Carpet bombing was part of a strategic air war campaign targetting military materiel stockpiles, factories and factory workers producing military goods, transport infrastructure, genera government infrastructure, and the will of the general population to continue fighting in that order. The overall strategy, mission goals and actual effects were completely different. It is a completely false comparison that you have drawn in a flailing attempt to have some kind of opinion on a subject you have not bothered to study.

the Japanese didn't surrender after the majority of their cities were decimated by firebombing*, why do we thing that the same idea will work here?

No one is trying to make any government surrender with drone strikes. There is not even an expectation that any non-governmental group will ´surrender´ (that basically never happens anyway). What they are trying to do is degrade operational effectiveness of the enemy by eliminating experienced commanders. The question is whether the successes are worth the cost in human life and the violation of international law.

[K. A. Pital]

Uh, yeah. Because people were more honest and caring about civilian casualties in the distant past. Right?

No, they were not. But nations also could not just go and bomb another state (due to the lack of "precision instruments" like drones) expecting no reaction. Or more precisely could not bomb without immediately risking war with this nation. Nowadays the US can bomb several other nations without end and thus run a war in the time of peace - an endless war everywhere.

http://www.thewire.com/politics/2013/02 ... map/61873/

the dark red countries are the ones in which the U.S. has conducted airstrikes. Medium-red countries are places where the U.S. has bases from which it's piloting the drones (including the one in Saudi Arabia that was made public overnight). The light red countries are the ones where the U.S. has used drones for surveillance. The relative number of drone strikes is indicated by the size of the blue dots.

There is a problem with normalization of endless violence by the developed countries under the guise of "war on terror". You can bomb other nations without declaring war. Infringe on their airspace, kill their civilians as 'collateral' without an actual war. You can even argue that since there's no war you are not bound by the laws of war (in which case, the euphemism "anti-terrorist operation" comes into play and bombing hospitals could become OK if you can take out an important target that way).

I see a problem there. Where does the scope of this violence from above end? Who controls it? Can a nation declare war on the US for bombing its people? In theory they can, but that'd be simply suicide, right? Or they can seal off their airspace and send protest notes etc - but will the US listen? It sure doesn't seem to respect Syria's airspace.

The question is whether the successes are worth the cost in human life and the violation of international law.

The question is: are human rights universal? And is it acceptable to surgically kill Americans? If so, then human rights are indeed universal and everyone can be killed as a collateral. But if this collateral applies only to foreigners from the Middle East, I see a problem.

[Patroklos]

No, they were not. But nations also could not just go and bomb another state (due to the lack of "precision instruments" like drones) expecting no reaction. Or more precisely could not bomb without immediately risking war with this nation. Nowadays the US can bomb several other nations without end and thus run a war in the time of peace - an endless war everywhere.

Sure they could, and did. History is full or examples of European powers meddling in the affairs of the rest of the world during their imperial era up to and including military incursions far worse that any drone strike in relative scale and the locals more often than not just had to deal with it. Hell, they did it to each other often enough.

However, of the countries on your map how many of their governments are either A.) actively and publicly involved in allowing/supporting these stikes or B.) not so covertluy allowing them to happen quid pro quo ie Pakistan? The fact is as much as you want to believe this is just the US going rough shod over all of these places the reality is we are there because the powers that be want us there for one reason or another.

the dark red countries are the ones in which the U.S. has conducted airstrikes. Medium-red countries are places where the U.S. has bases from which it's piloting the drones (including the one in Saudi Arabia that was made public overnight). The light red countries are the ones where the U.S. has used drones for surveillance. The relative number of drone strikes is indicated by the size of the blue dots.

Why does it matter what location the drones are piloted from? I know, so you can add more color to your map and make it more SCARRRRRRY!

There is a problem with normalization of endless violence by the developed countries under the guise of "war on terror". You can bomb other nations without declaring war. Infringe on their airspace, kill their civilians as 'collateral' without an actual war. You can even argue that since there's no war you are not bound by the laws of war (in which case, the euphemism "anti-terrorist operation" comes into play and bombing hospitals could become OK if you can take out an important target that way).

I agree with all of these being troubling, and our unique manifestation of it requiring examination and introspection. However, none of this is new. Again, for all of human history from the Romans to the Mongols to the Europeans to the US this has always been the case. It looks different sure, but its the same basic shit whether its king making in Egypt, trade route "protection" on the gold road, letters of marquis on the Spanish gold routes, or dropping hellfires in Balochistan.

I would point out though that what is happening now is pennies to the dollar compared to what was the the norm throughout history. Sort of like warfare in general. As much as we like the carry on about present events because if its happening to us it must be the most important thing EVAR, and we should mind you as they are the only events we can impact, your attempts to highlight the present by minimizing history are daft. We live in an exceptionally peaceful era, worldwide. Including the level at which nations dick around with each other.

I see a problem there. Where does the scope of this violence from above end? Who controls it? Can a nation declare war on the US for bombing its people? In theory they can, but that'd be simply suicide, right? Or they can seal off their airspace and send protest notes etc - but will the US listen? It sure doesn't seem to respect Syria's airspace.

And this is different than Europe meddling in 18th century China how? Rome dictating tribute payments how? The US pushing around the native Americans how? The Soviets puppetering Eastern Europe in the Cold War how? The British doing whatever the hell they wanted on the worlds oceans for a century and a half how? Different actors, same story.

The question is: are human rights universal? And is it acceptable to surgically kill Americans? If so, then human rights are indeed universal and everyone can be killed as a collateral. But if this collateral applies only to foreigners from the Middle East, I see a problem.

Of course its the case. But that isn't the only variable now is it, as you pointed out above?

[Adam Reynolds]

Uh, yeah. Because people were more honest and caring about civilian casualties in the distant past. Right?

More caring isn't true, but you could say it was more honest. In WW2, when the firebombing of Japan was used, no one involved had any misconceptions as to whether what they were doing was a war crime. Curtis LeMay even admitted that had the US lost the war, he would have been executed as a war criminal. Though interestingly, the Nuremberg trials did not try anyone for strategic bombing. Unrestricted submarine warfare was also off the table for the same reasons(the US did exactly the same thing in the Pacific).

What's truly unfortunate is that the air power theorists then got a war that triggered all their confirmation biases- the Gulf War. Because when you're fighting a large army in an open desert that's commanded by a suspicious, power-hungry dictator whose people never really liked him anyway, hell yes this strategy is effective. Blowing up a few key command bunkers, air defense installations, and so on can totally break apart the chain of command and dislocate the dictator's military power, at which point you can pretty much demolish the enemy's entire army at will and there's nowhere for them to run or hide because they're fighting in the middle of the desert.

What is interesting is that the number of destroyed Iraqi vehicles massively increased when they were attacked on the ground. Even in a desert, it is relatively easy to hide an army from air attack. At least not when facing an enemy on the ground at the same time. In forty-four days of bombing, only 1,028 Iraqi vehicles were destroyed. In one hundred hours of ground combat, 3,117 were destroyed.

In Kosovo, which was both more built up and heavily forested, 1 out of every 57 sorties destroyed a Serbian armored vehicle. Out of nearly 3,000 total sorties, NATO air forces destroyed a total of 52 Serbian armored vehicles.

But somehow, two generations of American policymakers looked at this war and decided it 'must' mean that they could do the same thing to any opponent. And what works against a highly centralized, concentrated, unmotivated, heavily equipped army in the desert does not work against a decentralized, scattered, ideologically fanatical, lightly equipped guerilla force spread across half the Middle East. Which makes attempts to destroy Al Qaeda by strategic bombing utterly, utterly pointless, and any civilian deaths that result from that attempt into a stupid, bloody, barbarous waste.

That is exactly my point. Air interdiction in support of ground forces can be very effective, as can air strikes against navies(though we haven't had those since WW2). Air forces on their own are largely impotent at causing major political change or fully destroying enemy armies. Using air forces against a group like Al Qaeda is very nearly pointless.

If it's debateable, and there were two separate causes that both made negotiated settlement impossible simultaneously, saying "it wasn't X, it was Y" seems biased. Personally I'd attribute the Japanese surrender to both factors at the same time.

True. My point was that the atomic bombs alone weren't the only key factor.

Except that it is in no way intended to accomplish anything remotely resembling ´the same thing´, by any military or even civillian commander, ever.

It is not the same "thing," in the sense of fighting an opposing nation state, but it is the same logic. That of coercion by air attack. It is the idea that the enemy will be defeated if only we kill enough of them and destroy enough of their infrastructure. While that is actually possible, as successfully carried out by the Romans, it has never occurred solely through the use of aerial bombardment.

In this case, that infrastructure is mostly human capital in the form of experienced commanders. By assassinating them we are attempting to destroy their infrastructure in a different sense. And like then, the majority of the people we kill had nothing to do with it directly.

No one is trying to make any government surrender with drone strikes. There is not even an expectation that any non-governmental group will ´surrender´ (that basically never happens anyway). What they are trying to do is degrade operational effectiveness of the enemy by eliminating experienced commanders. The question is whether the successes are worth the cost in human life and the violation of international law.

The fact that Al-Qaeda/ISIS is not a government is irrelevant. We are trying to convince people to not join them. It clearly isn't working. When Al-Qaeda was largely defeated, ISIS sprung up in its place.

A better solution to a group like ISIS is to decrease the US military presence and increase true diplomacy in the region(not the sort that relies on a position of superiority to negotiate terms). While it would obviously do nothing against ISIS in the short run, in the long run it would cause their sources of funding and recruits to dry up as there would be less ill will towards the US.

I see a problem there. Where does the scope of this violence from above end? Who controls it? Can a nation declare war on the US for bombing its people? In theory they can, but that'd be simply suicide, right? Or they can seal off their airspace and send protest notes etc - but will the US listen? It sure doesn't seem to respect Syria's airspace.

It would be interesting(though unlikely) if the Russians shot down a couple of them over Syria. It's not like the US could do anything against Russia.

And this is different than Europe meddling in 18th century China how? Rome dictating tribute payments how? The US pushing around the native Americans how? The Soviets puppetering Eastern Europe in the Cold War how? The British doing whatever the hell they wanted on the worlds oceans for a century and a half how? Different actors, same story.

A fundamental problem today is that America does this whilst also claiming the moral high ground. British imperialists did not. They justified what they were doing but they never claimed that it was the moral thing to do.

[Patroklos]

More caring isn't true, but you could say it was more honest. In WW2, when the firebombing of Japan was used, no one involved had any misconceptions as to whether what they were doing was a war crime. Curtis LeMay even admitted that had the US lost the war, he would have been executed as a war criminal. Though interestingly, the Nuremberg trials did not try anyone for strategic bombing. Unrestricted submarine warfare was also off the table for the same reasons(the US did exactly the same thing in the Pacific).

Yeah, no. That Curtis LeMay quote is in regards to victors justice not actual justice (see your unrestricted submarine warfare point). He made in in reference to the Japanese for fucks sake, who executed civilians for looking at them wrong and marched unremarkable enemy foot soldiers to death for LOLs. I am sure any commander who put that much or a hurt on them, legally or illegally, would meat the pointy end of a samurai sword.

Where the fuck do you come up with this shit?

What is interesting is that the number of destroyed Iraqi vehicles massively increased when they were attacked on the ground. Even in a desert, it is relatively easy to hide an army from air attack. At least not when facing an enemy on the ground at the same time. In forty-four days of bombing, only 1,028 Iraqi vehicles were destroyed. In one hundred hours of ground combat, 3,117 were destroyed.

In Kosovo, which was both more built up and heavily forested, 1 out of every 57 sorties destroyed a Serbian armored vehicle. Out of nearly 3,000 total sorties, NATO air forces destroyed a total of 52 Serbian armored vehicles.

You may find it interesting but hopefully not surprising. Aircraft are high dollar low endurance equipment. Their point is to provide overwhelming force at the right place at the right time. Ground forces have the benefit of being numerous, expendable (relative), high endurance and importantly in regards to vehicle destuction effectively unlimited ammunition. Air power is not about destroying everything, its about destroying the right things at the right time to make the rest of the stuff irrelevant, ineffective or at least far less important.

A fundamental problem today is that America does this whilst also claiming the moral high ground. British imperialists did not. They justified what they were doing but they never claimed that it was the moral thing to do.

Not sure if serious...

[Channel72]

The fact that Al-Qaeda/ISIS is not a government is irrelevant. We are trying to convince people to not join them. It clearly isn't working. When Al-Qaeda was largely defeated, ISIS sprung up in its place.

You seem confused. ISIS actually is a government, and they did not "replace" Al-Qaeda - in fact the two groups co-exist and are antagonistic to each other. Classic Al-Qaeda (as opposed to neo-AlQaeda, which is a useless brand name adopted by militants) was an international terrorist organization that was sponsored by a government (the Taliban) and a few wealthy individuals. ISIS is a straight-up government with a known location - it is connected to Al Qaeda loosely in the sense that many ISIS fighters were former Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq fighters (and AQIQ is not the same thing as Classic International Terrorist Al-Qaeda). Anyway, ISIS could be defeated tomorrow by carpet bombing Mosul and North West Syria. Classic Al-Qaeda could not be defeated in such a way - the location of their leaders at any one time is not generally known, and has to be discovered via intel.

[Channel72]

Also, the existence of ISIS is pretty much orthogonal to the effectiveness of the drone program. The drone program was designed mostly to eliminate Al Qaeda leadership and disrupt their operations. It has been mostly successful at doing that. ISIS is a different matter - they're not some international terrorist organization. They're just a Syrian militia with expansionist territorial ambitions that took advantage of the chaos during a civil war, and coalesced with some Iraqi milita elements who were using the name Al Qaeda and at one point had the blessing of actual Al Qaeda leadership (before Al Qaeda disowned IS at least).

[Solauren]

So, what's basically a cross between high end lego-mindstorm programming and a toy helicopter with a missile on it isn't reliable?

Color me surprised....

[Adam Reynolds]

More caring isn't true, but you could say it was more honest. In WW2, when the firebombing of Japan was used, no one involved had any misconceptions as to whether what they were doing was a war crime. Curtis LeMay even admitted that had the US lost the war, he would have been executed as a war criminal. Though interestingly, the Nuremberg trials did not try anyone for strategic bombing. Unrestricted submarine warfare was also off the table for the same reasons(the US did exactly the same thing in the Pacific).

Yeah, no. That Curtis LeMay quote is in regards to victors justice not actual justice (see your unrestricted submarine warfare point). He made in in reference to the Japanese for fucks sake, who executed civilians for looking at them wrong and marched unremarkable enemy foot soldiers to death for LOLs. I am sure any commander who put that much or a hurt on them, legally or illegally, would meat the pointy end of a samurai sword.

Where the fuck do you come up with this shit?

It was from the interviews with Robert McNamera for the documentary The Fog of War:

LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?

You could argue that McNamera was lying. But there it is.

You may find it interesting but hopefully not surprising. Aircraft are high dollar low endurance equipment. Their point is to provide overwhelming force at the right place at the right time. Ground forces have the benefit of being numerous, expendable (relative), high endurance and importantly in regards to vehicle destuction effectively unlimited ammunition. Air power is not about destroying everything, its about destroying the right things at the right time to make the rest of the stuff irrelevant, ineffective or at least far less important.

My point is that the single dimensional threat of air power is much less effective on its own. Of course it is not surprising that it is ineffective. But the degree to which it is ineffective is often surprising. 52 sorties for a single destroyed enemy vehicle is not an effective use of resources.

Not sure if serious...

Is that statement anything but true? The American UN Ambassador, Samantha Powers, regularly takes the moral high ground on issues of human rights while the US is committed to the drone war.

[Patroklos]

You could argue that McNamera was lying. But there it is.

I'd argue he is navel gazing after the fact. What you said was that everyone involved, EVERYONE from Lemay down to the the B-17 tall gunner, considered themselves war criminals at the time. So far you have provided maybe two people out of probably millions you need to qualify.

My point is that the single dimensional threat of air power is much less effective on its own. Of course it is not surprising that it is ineffective. But the degree to which it is ineffective is often surprising. 52 sorties for a single destroyed enemy vehicle is not an effective use of resources.

Agreed on the first point. However you didn't qualify those sorties, as if that were 52 A-10s tolling for tanks and only one found it. What that actually includes is the AWACs overhead, the EW birds suppressing all manor of shit. The SAR support orbiting overhead. The air suppression orbiting overhead. etc. etc. A lot of the threats many of those sorties were put up for never materialized, largely because Serbia barely engaged is ground based AA and never contested the skies. But we had to account for that in case they did.

Its like if I said we flew 8,000 sorties of Iraq in 1991 (just an example) but only shot down ten aircraft and told you its surprising. Or 10,000 sorties over Afghanistan and shot down zero aircraft. That might be true, but its a useless statement.

Is that statement anything but true? The American UN Ambassador, Samantha Powers, regularly takes the moral high ground on issues of human rights while the US is committed to the drone war.

Sure they have. The question is how you can state the Romans, British, Mongols, Spanish, etc. didn't do the same thing after the fashion of their day with a straight face. And not only did it, but did it to justify far worse actions even by their own standards.

[Thanas]

Actually the Romans were the first to punish their commanders for war crimes and had strict laws what you could do and could not do with the enemy population.

[Patroklos]

Exactly why I used them. Though they were wildly uneven in applying them and certainly used them as political attack tool regardless of merit.

[Thanas]

Exactly why I used them. Though they were wildly uneven in applying them

That's not really true.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, I think the moral problem here is compounded by the fact that the first part of your sentence isn't necessarily true. Let's put aside the serious moral problems here for a second, and ask the cold and ruthless question: "does the drone program effectively accomplish its goal?" - where the goal is to kill people the US doesn't like cheaply and effectively with minimal political fuss. The answer to that question seems to be yes. Of course, it's certainly debatable, as most of the claims about the drone program's effectiveness come from biased sources (namely, from Washington). But using third party metrics, such as estimated finances available to Al Qaeda and overall operational resources, it appears that Al Qaeda's overall operational capacity - as an international terrorist organization - has declined dramatically since the days of their "big hits" like 9/11 and the Madrid/London bombings. The Al Qaeda name is still around - but it's really Al Qaeda in name only. The actual participants who use the name are not international terrorists, but just local soldiers who fight openly in various sectarian conflicts throughout Syria and Iraq.

Thing is, Al Qaeda's cause is doing rather well- the specific problem of "big hit" terrorism has been suppressed, but we still have isolated nutballs committing smaller scale terrorism against Western nations in the name of Al Qaeda and its successors.

And Al Qaeda has gone from being a fringe movement financed by a few Saudi oil barons to an ideology popular enough that local copycat groups deliberately take on its name.

And since, unlike an actual country, Al Qaeda is totally expendable in the interests of the political ideology it embodies, and can be totally destroyed without winning the 'war' in any long term sense... the mere fact that we're stopping Al Qaeda itself from launching 'big hit' terrorism is not enough.

The drone program also directly frustrates Al Qaeda's openly stated goal of "bleeding" the US to death by continuously forcing it to get involved in expensive overseas wars. Recall this was Bin Laden's doctrine which he formulated via his experience fighting the USSR, and this "bleed the superpower" strategy formed a core tenet of the Al Qaeda operating strategy in the 90s and early 2000s. That strategy actually seemed to be working for a while, especially when Bush and Cheney inexplicably decided to go on a needless trillion-dollar rampage throughout Iraq. But that strategy is totally defunct now, since the US can just sit at home, eating nachos and pressing a button that kills somebody on the outskirts of Islamabad.

The problem is that, as you note, the collateral damage from this means the threat never goes away. And sometimes it flares up (as with Da'esh) in a way that foreigners MUST commit troops to oppose; drones are not enough to deal with something like the Syrian Civil War.

So the drones are at most 'locking down' the specific political entity we started this war by fighting against, while having minimal effect on its ability to create daughter movements and maintain lasting impact on geopolitics.

[K. A. Pital]

Sure they could, and did. History is full or examples of European powers meddling in the affairs of the rest of the world during their imperial era up to and including military incursions far worse that any drone strike in relative scale and the locals more often than not just had to deal with it. Hell, they did it to each other often enough.

War is war. War in peace is a different matter.

The fact is as much as you want to believe this is just the US going rough shod over all of these places the reality is we are there because the powers that be want us there for one reason or another.

Except... You are the powers that be, others are dirt and dust to be crushed. Or your allies, and thus accessory to your crimes (Saudi Arabia).

Why does it matter what location the drones are piloted from? I know, so you can add more color to your map and make it more SCARRRRRRY!

No, it matters because it shows your so-called sphere of influence, the nations you convinced to play along in your criminal endeavours.

I agree with all of these being troubling, and our unique manifestation of it requiring examination and introspection. However, none of this is new. Again, for all of human history from the Romans to the Mongols to the Europeans to the US this has always been the case. It looks different sure, but its the same basic shit whether its king making in Egypt, trade route "protection" on the gold road, letters of marquis on the Spanish gold routes, or dropping hellfires in Balochistan.

It does not look different. In all ages there would be empires and their opponent. Your nation seeks to be the ultimate empire through an "end of history" where it polices the whole world which is converted to capitalism. So I point out the problem with it. History matters only as example of the same behaviour.

We live in an exceptionally peaceful era, worldwide. Including the level at which nations dick around with each other.

You live in total peace and security, blowing up third worlders with your weapons. Cut this "life is getting better for everyone everywhere" crap, it is sickening.

And this is different than Europe meddling in 18th century China how? Rome dictating tribute payments how? The US pushing around the native Americans how? The Soviets puppetering Eastern Europe in the Cold War how? The British doing whatever the hell they wanted on the worlds oceans for a century and a half how? Different actors, same story.

Maybe because the other stories are over. But your story is not. You enjoy your "full security" while others die.

Of course its the case. But that isn't the only variable now is it, as you pointed out above?

It seems like this is not the case. One is secure while others suffer. And if there was a drone blowing up your house, I am sure you would shup up about exceptional worldwide peace immediately.

[Thanas]

I don't like how ill-chosen historical analogies are bandied around. No, droning is not like letters of marque on Spanish ships, because the USA would be spain here. It is also not like Rome exacting tribute, because the Romans went to war to help their tributary states, unlike the USA, which is doing jack shit for its drone victims. Furthermore, it is a bit rich to use completely different moral contexts in this way. Heck, just because it was legal to go to the neighbouring village to plunder it would surely not have anybody same arguing it is ok to do the same today.

[Simon_Jester]

Drone strikes are entirely unlike letters of marque and I'm having a hard time imagining anyone stupid enough to think of such a bad and dumb analogy.

Drone strikes ARE quite a bit like all sorts of other 'punitive actions' taken by imperial hegemons throughout history, though. The empire is striking in overwhelming force at scattered, comparatively primitive and ragtag opponents, with a great indifference to collateral damage so long as the "savages" are "punished" and properly cowed.

And, like a lot of such punitive actions, most of the drone strikes are being done with the nominal consent of the recognized government (i.e. puppet) that runs the area with the empire's approval. There's a reason the US doesn't fly its drones over anyone likely to shoot back effectively.